Medical Malpractice Tort Reform

Medical malpractice lawsuits are an extremely serious topic and have affected numerous patients, doctors, and hospitals across the country. Medical malpractice is defined as “improper, unskilled or negligent treatment of a patient by a physician, dentist, nurse, pharmacist, or other health care professional” (Medical malpractice, n.d.). If a doctor acts negligent and causes harm to a patient, malpractice lawsuits arise. Negligence is the concept of the liability concerning claims of medical malpractice, making this type of litigation part of tort law. Tort law provides that one person may litigate negligence to recover damages for personal injury. Negligence laws are designed to deter careless behavior and also to

Tort reform is very controversial issue. From the plaintiff’s perspective, tort reforms seems to take liability away from places such as insurance companies and hospitals which could at times leave the plaintiff without defense. From the defendant’s perspective, tort reform provides a defense from extremely large punitive damage awards. There seems to be no median between the two. Neither side will be satisfied. With the help of affiliations such as the American Tort Reform Association and Citizens Against Lawsuit Abuse, many businesses and corporations are working to change the current tort system to stop these high cash awards.

In the article “Despite Counsel, Victim Is Hindered by tort laws.” The author Becca Aaronson, explains that sometimes tort laws may not feel fair. Connie Spears is just an ordinary woman who went to the Emergency because she felt some pain in her legs which she told the hospital she is known to have blood clots but, after being checked by the doctors they sent her home with a minor diagnoses. Just a short few days later she ended up in a different hospital with serious illness that caused her to loose both of her legs. She then filed a medical malpractice law suit but, she had to produce adequate expert reports within 120 days of filing their cases or she will be ordered to pay the defendants court fees. Connie Spears argues that

The Plaintiffs felt that since the hospital was licensed and accredited that they should be held responsible for their employees and their actions. It states in the regulations that any infraction of the bylaws imposes liability for the injury. At any time if Dr. Alexander had questions or concerns he could have reached out to an expert in this field to consult

Since about the mid-late 1980’s many states have implemented and enforced statutes to limit tort lawsuits. Tort reform is the political term for redefining tort laws and reducing tort litigation, damages, compensation, and even amounts awarded (Quinn). The reformation of the nation’s tort system, or changing laws throughout a state dealing with injuries to a person or their property have done a lot more harm than good for consumers. While each tort reform law varies depending on the state, they all have one of the following goals in mind: “(1) to make it more difficult for injured people to file a lawsuit, (2) to make it more difficult for injured people to obtain a jury trial, (3) to place limits on the amount of money injured people receive in a lawsuit (Lane).”

When someone is seriously harmed by a medical professional to the point where they will be damaged for the rest of their life, they deserve to be compensated, especially if the person is a dependent and will need lifelong care. A serious example of this problem is the case of a couple in Nebraska whose son was born with cerebral palsy due to negligence by their obstetrician. When the case went to trial, the monetary value assessed for taking care of their son for the rest of his life was six million dollars, and the jury awarded them 5.6 million. However, the cap on all damages, both economic and noneconomic, is 1.25 million, so that was the amount of money the couple received (Hot Coffee). This is a problem for two reasons: caps limit the jury’s ability to make a fair decision based on the trial, and the lack of money paid out by the doctor’s insurance will have to be covered by taxpayers later. The point of a jury is to allow a panel of peers to judge a person’s case and give a worthy compensation in the civil justice system, and caps take this away from the jury. The son will now be taken care of by Medicaid and Social Security money, which ultimately comes out of tax payer’s pockets, leaving citizens responsible for something the insurance companies should have covered. This is exactly what insurance companies want, and they will continue to ensure they pay out as little money as

The rising price of health care and the amount of medical malpractice claims being filed sparked a start to this controversial topic. The average price of medical care has gone up roughly 20 percent between the late ‘80s and the early 2000s (The risk authority, 2014). And the amount of medical malpractice claims in the same twenty years has arisen from one person filing a claim to five people filing the same claim, in a small ratio (Doyle, n.d.). The rising cost of medical expenses is feeding off of the increase in the amount of these cases filed every year. There are other reasons for the medical cost to rise such as the new expensive treatments and medications. But these new innovations are also raising the amount medical malpractice

Negligence, when defined, can be specified as "the failure to exercise the care that would be used by a reasonable prudent physician in the same situation" (State of New York Department of Health, 2010). Physicians that fall short to follow medical procedures or necessities while dealing with clients are thought are believed to be irresponsible and negligent irrespective of whether they were injured as a result of it or not. For a doctor to be determined as irresponsible or negligent "all that must be proven is that a physician failed to meet the standard of care" (State of New York Department of Health, 2010). Irresponsible or negligence include, but are not restricted to, the following: unlawful handling/management of a wound or disease, or any form of treatment that triggered brand-new troubles to surface, a medical diagnosis offered a little too late for its management to be efficient or if the physician started the incorrect treatment due to very little examination of the condition (ArticleBase, 2008).

In the field of medicine sometimes there are mistakes that are made by the medical professions. Unfortunately these mistakes end up harming the very person that the medical professional was supposed to be helping. When this happens there becomes a medical malpractice suit. I am going to tell you about a case of malpractice that involves anesthesia.

One can sue a health practitioner for medical malpractice if he or she failed to establish an effective communication with his or her patient and in turn, has not provided any form of consent. Medical malpractice can also be considered for the incompetence that a surgeon has displayed with regard to the procedure, thereby causing multiple injuries and health complications on the patient. Finally, one can file a malpractice lawsuit due to a practitioner’s violation of duty which resulted to damages such as paralysis or death on the part of the patient (Health Leaders Media,

A tort is a civil wrong that occurs when a party breaches a legal duty owed to another party and as a result the non-breaching party seeks remedy in the form of damages. Negligence is an unintentional tort that occurs when a party fails to provide the proper standard of care that a reasonable person would have provided in a similar situation. A higher degree of negligence is gross negligence. Gross negligence occurs when a party’s action falls substantially below “reasonable care” and such action can be considered as intentional rather than

Doctors are sued less often in Europe than in the USA, though the problem has been more serious in recent years. The costs of malpractice insurance and lawsuits are very high in both the US and in Europe. In Japan, unexpected deaths in hospitals have been increasingly suspected of resulting from malpractice

Now, this is the reason why society should care if our medical personnel are failing to do their job or why you should it care collectively about a physician who was sued in the past, but won the case? Medical malpractice doesn’t only have negative effects on the patient. I understand that the patient has to deal with emotional and/or physical distress as well. Their entire lives are uprooted and they have to make a lot of adjustments as necessary. I am sympathetic to the families who are affected. I feel the same for the affected physicians who have won their and

The first solution for medical malpractice is caps. caps simply are the compensation which is provided to people who was effected by medical malpractice. According to Bernstein.J.(2013) explained that “caps would mandate that all medical expenses and lost wages caused by malpractice are compensable, no more than a given amount, say USD 250,000, can be awarded for pain and suffering.”. Caps is a compensation in which an amount of money is given to patient who was effected. Caps started to spread gradually among countries for two main reasons, the first is to minimize or prevent lawsuits and the second one is to be a way to satisfy

“When I do good, I feel good. When I do bad, I feel bad. That's my religion”. Abraham Lincoln once said this and he said this in the sense that everyone is vulnerable to doing wrong by accident or on purpose. Doctor is considered as great people who are able to use their skills to care for patients; nonetheless, they can deviate from the good and become bad as well. In response to this malpractice, laws are there to protect patients from being harmed by the practice of a doctor. Giving the advantage of suing the doctor for malpractice creates a functioning barrier that affects the performance of a doctor. Malpractice laws create fear in the physician that it hinders them from performing in their maximum capacity. Although malpractice